Title

Adaptive molecular evolution of virulence genes of avian influenza - A virus subtype H5N1: An analysis of host radiation

Authors

Rocky Kumar, Partho Halder and Raju Poddar*

Affiliation

Department of Biotechnology, Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, India

Email

rpoddar@bitmesra.ac.in; * Corresponding author

Phone

+91-651-2276223

Fax

+91-651-22755401

Article Type

Hypothesis

Date

received December 21, 2006; revised December 24, 2006; accepted December 25, 2006; published online December 26, 2006

Abstract

The phenomenon of host radiation is strongly influenced by the rates of mutation of their virulence genes. We have studied the molecular evolution of virulence genes (HA, NS, PB2) of the Avian Influenza Virus H5N1 from avian to human hosts. We used a site-specific comparison of synonymous (silent) and non-synonymous (amino acid altering) nucleotide substitutions for the three chosen genes in parasite populations from different hosts. Analyses were made using Maximum Likelihood (ML) genealogies for the null and alternate hypothesis based on differential gamma distribution rates. The null hypothesis had a higher rate of substitution and was found to be more suitable for all the studied genes by Likelihood Ratio Test (LRT). The study showed the NS gene to be having the fastest rate of evolution.
 

Keywords

avian influenza A virus (H5N1); adaptive molecular evolution; hemagglutinin, NS; PB2; host niche; nucleotide substitution rates; positive selection; Markov model; Likelihood ratio test

Citation

Edited by

P. Kangueane

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.